Continuing on the last article covering an assortment of movie and audio plugins you need to try with Windows 7 Media Center, we’ve got even more plugins you need to give a try. These plugins cover features that should be included in any decent ten-foot media application in this day and age of widespread internet access, Weather and Social Media. Be sure to check back again soon for the third installment where we’ll cover several programs that lend themselves to an even better Media Center experience as well.

Weather

Misleading name aside, Vista4Cast is the perfect addition to Windows 7 Media Center. This handy plugin allows you to get a quick view of the weather forecast for the next few days right from the Start Menu as well as dig deeper into future weather patterns using the main plugin. The short forecast display is very configurable including fonts, colors and more. The main plugin supports multiple cities and includes very extensive details gleaned from The Weather Channel’s forecast. Be sure to give this fantastic plugin a try today!

Heatwave is a wonderful weather plugin that’s incredibly stylish to boot. Allowing you to access a number of city locations you can set from inside Media Center through a convenient and easy to use configuration panel. The newest version, which also updates the plugin to work with Windows 7 RTM, even includes a built in on-screen keyboard (though currently not functioning). Now that this plugin has been updated to work with the latest version of Windows 7 Media Center it’s sure to return to many a Media Center thanks to it beautiful interface styling allowing for a full five day forecast to be viewing at a glance with easy to understand icons.

Social Media

Want to read those forwarded joke mails and other assorted spam on your ten-foot interface? No problem! Media Center Mail can bring you all that and more. This plugin supports multiple users and an easy to use configuration plugin to manage your email account settings. Each user can have multiple accounts and accessing email from each account is fairly easy from inside Media Center as well. If you’re looking for an email solution for Media Center, look no further.

Twitter addicts fear not, you can tweet from your couch while watching movies and TV! TwitterMCE allows you to not only check tweets from friends while away from the PC but you can even make tweets right from Media Center. Use the full on screen keyboard, complete with character countdown, to tweet about whatever it is you just saw on TV or the movie your watching. You can even browse through a complete list of your friends and followers. This is a must have app for movie loving Twitter users.

Looking for a more hands-free method of updating your Facebook and Twitter friends to what your currently listening to or watching inside Windows 7 Media Center? Media Center Status Application has got just what you need. This little plugin lets you establish a series of rules to automatically update your status on either social network whenever you begin playing media inside Windows Media Center. With advanced rules to determine exactly what types of media to update for and exclusion rules for specific files you can even avoid being overly annoying to your social media buddies (or letting them know about that embarrassing Justin Timberlake obsession).

Be sure to stick around for the next part in the series where we’ll cover a few more plugins that take care of some of the missing features in the background of Windows 7 Media Center as well as a hand full of must-have programs that make your Media Center interface even better.

Source Article:
Even More Plugins You Need to Try with Windows 7 Media Center

Despite Windows 7 Media Center’s inclusion of a native movie library no function to actually rip the DVDs to the library was included. Certainly an attempt to avoid this legal grey area of copying purchased media to a secondary source, this also leaves out an important feature from the Media Center platform. This of course leaves an area open for third party developers to come up with a solution, however, up until this point very few options were available such as My Movies’ Media Center plugin. Fortunately, eMpTy3000 of The Green Button forums has taken up the initiative to create another option for Media Center users though not quite as developed as the My Movies option.

To get started with Auto Rip n Compress we’ll need to download a few programs. First, we’ll need to get a copy of DVDFab which includes the command line interface such as the latest version. Once installed you’ll need to run the program once to select the Free edition of the program as well. Also required is a copy of the latest version of the Handbrake CLI available from the Handbrake site as a separate download. Finally, install the Auto Rip n Convert program  check the TGB thread for the latest version.

After installing the program we need to setup the options. The main options dialog will appear once setup completes allowing you to set the basic options and define the locations of the programs we’ve downloaded as well as the DVD drive.

Be certain that the locations are correct as well as setting the final location to an area available to the Windows 7 Media Center Movie Library. On this screen there is also an option available to rip just the main movie or the entire disk. The Compress Settings allows you to establish the Handbrake CLI settings to be used by Auto Rip n Convert. Be certain to set the correct location of the Handbrake CLI, the file type extension to be used as well as the preset and subtitles options on this window. If you’d prefer to not compress the disk and leave the Video_TS as it is simply change the Compress option to No.

Once all the settings have been established correctly most Media Center users will want to create a start menu strip entry for the program as well to enable launching the program from inside Media Center. Unfortunately the program doesn’t offer this option and we’ll need to use Media Center Studio to do that at the moment. Also, the program doesn’t include a Media Center interface for naming the titles and instead minimizes Media Center to require manual title entry which will certainly be a turn-off to many Media Center users.

For those unfamiliar with Media Center Studio check out our previous articles on using the program as well as creating custom start menu strips. In order to add Auto Rip n Convert to a strip we’ll need to take the extra step of creating an entry point for the program inside Media Center Studio. From the Start Menu options pages press the Application creation button on the top actions strip to create a new entry. Then enter the location of the Auto Rip n Compress program and give the entry point a title then save the changes.

Now we can return to the main Start Menu tab and drag the new entry point from the listing to any strip we’d like to have it listed in. Once again save the changes and you can now close the program and launch Windows 7 Media Center.

As mentioned earlier the current version of Auto Rip n Convert doesn’t include a method for setting the DVD title from inside Media Center and will minimize the program to request the title entry. This is a serious downside and hopefully something that will be addressed in the future as there are many people who would prefer a complete Media Center experience.

From there the program will send the relevant options to DVDFab and Handbrake to automate the ripping and conversion process. The launching of these various windows may also interfere with the display of Windows 7 Media Center but this isn’t necessarily something that the author will be able to rectify. Also, DVDFab presents a number of additional options that will need to be answered before processing the first disk. Be certain to select the Do Not Ask Again option on each of these windows so as to not be prompted each time. That’s all there is to it! Auto Rip n Convert is certainly a decent new project and we’re sure the future will bring some updates that will improve the user experience though as always we’d love to see the project go open source.

Source Article:
Auto Rip n Compress adds DVD Ripping to Media Center (Almost)

By default the new Netflix application remembers a users login information for use each time you enter the movie browser. However, what if you should change your username or password via the Netflix website? Unfortunately at this point instead of allowing you to re-enter your information the Netflix app simply returns a login error and sends you back to the start menu. In order to re-enter our login information and once again be able to login to the Netflix app we need to clear the registry entries containing the login information.

To get started we need to launch the Windows Registry Editor by opening the start menu and enter “regedit” into the search box and press enter. A dialog will appear asking you to confirm, since the program needs administrator privileges to run. Once inside you’ll see a folder style listing on the left and a few entries on the right. In the left hand pane navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionMedia CenterExtensionsNetflix.

Delete the Netflix folder or just the entries on the right hand side to erase the saved login information and once again be able to re-enter your login information. Just relaunch Windows 7 Media Center and enter the Netflix application and you should once again receive the login prompt.

Afterward re-launch Windows 7 Media Center and you should be presented with the login screen next time you enter the Netflix application.

Source Article:
Resetting Netflix Login Information in Windows Media Center

There may come a time when you want to edit the metadata of a WTV or DVRMS file manually. Luckily, Windows 7 includes a built-in editor allowing the editing of metadata of both file formats. Much like music metadata editor provided in previous versions of Windows the metadata editor for WTV and DVRMS files can be accessed by right-clicking the file in Windows Explorer and selecting the properties window. From inside the properties window, selecting the Details tab will bring up a basic editor for viewing and modifying the current metadata of the file.

Just hover over the value area for any given detail and a text entry box will appear allowing editing of that value. Unfortunately, not all the values are displayed or editable inside this basic metadata editor. There are a number of additional meta values that can be used to customize the categorization of files such as genre and whether or not a particular file is a movie.

Fortunately, there is a third-party program created by Steven Toub that’s perfectly capable of editing these hidden metadata values in both DVRMS and WTV files. His DVRMS metadata editor is quite old at this point but still works quite well with both file types. When opening a WTV file you’ll just need to adjust the file filter dropbox to show all file types and select the WTV file you’d like to edit.

As you can see, Toub’s editor provides a much more comprehensive listing of metadata values available inside DVRMS and WTV files than the built-in editor. Having access to the genre and movie meta tags and well as title, description and HD designations makes this an excellent tool for anyone looking to convert their movie collections to the new WTV format standard in Windows 7.

There are a few reasons some may be considering converting their collections to WTV, not least of which is the ability to play the format on any Windows Media Extender. This means not having to deal with the issues that seem to plague other formats such as .mkv on extenders. We’ll be covering more on this movement as software becomes publicly available to facilitate the switch such as the next version of DVRMSToolbox from Andy VT’s blog.

When you’ve finished editing metadata details inside Toub’s editor just hit the Save Metadata button to commit the changes and that’s all there is to it.

Previously, getting MKV to work properly inside Windows 7 Media Center has required quite a bit of effort on the part of the end user. It was necessary to install a number of third party codecs, make modifications to the registry and tweak codec settings to get everything to play nicely. By default Windows 7 Media Center uses a new method for playing back audio video content known as Windows Media Foundation which replaces the older method known as DirectShow. Unfortunately, every codec package available to this point is programmed for DirectShow and doesn’t take advantage of the new WMP format meaning playing non-supported formats was a substantial hassle.

Luckily for us there is a small light at the end of the tunnel in the form of Divx Lab’s MKV project. The Divx Lab’s project aims to utilize the Windows Media Foundation to enable playback of the popular MKV format on both the main Media Center machine as well as extenders. Not only does this mean support for extenders but it could also very well mean the end to playing with various codec package settings to tweak the audio/video settings to match the output of the default Media Center playback.

Beyond enabling playback through your Windows Media Center Extenders, the picture quality of the Windows Media Foundation solution is incredible and contains complete DVXA hardware acceleration support. So not only is the quality fantastic but hardware acceleration will keep frame rates right where they should be without the drops that can sometimes occur with CPU intensive codecs such as FFDShow.

Using Divx Lab’s MKV preview video quality is amazing in full 1080p without so much as a hint of latency in the playback. There are still a few downsides to using the preview though. For instance, you’ll still be required to install a third party codec for audio playback depending on the audio encoding used for your movies. The newest version of AC3Filter is all you’ll need though and provides ACM wrapper allowing the playback to be passed through Windows Media Foundation as well.

To give this great new product a try just head on over to the Divx Labs MKV Tech Preview page and create an account. Then hit up the Project Rémoulade Apps group page for a list of downloads and grab the latest version of the tech preview. To get your MKV files to show up in the native movie library you’ll still need to install the registry fix for either x86 systems or x64 systems depending on the OS being used. Don’t forget to grab the latest version of AC3Filter Full as well if you need extra support for AC3 audio and install that as well.

That’s all you need to give this tech preview from Dixv Labs a try and get MKV videos playing through the new Windows Media Foundation system.